ABSTRACT
Globalisation and technology are coming together to enable a global search for the lowest-cost sources of production and consumption that is driving environmental externalities. In doing so it is leaving many people behind and undermining the sustainability of people, places and environments. People who are quietly, but actively, resisting the process, whilst offering a historical reminder of how the Merchant Princes (Kennedy 2000) developed the idea of business as a source of both social change and competitive advantage. This chapter will examine how we need an ethical shift that redefines humans as a connected part of nature, rather than its conqueror, as the basis of new models of leadership rooted in contemporary expressions of stewardship. Finally, it will offer some contemporary examples of enterprises that celebrate and nurture ideas of local sustainability that are consciously constructing networked, perhaps even polycentric (Ostrom 2015), systems models of organisation and leadership.
